Rylan Swim

Rylan has graduated from swim class. He took the Infant Swim Resource program for about six weeks. They had classes in Aina Haina and Joni took him there every morning for a 10 minute session in the pool with the ISR instructor. For weeks it seemed we were just torturing our Baby Rylan. In the end he made a dramatic improvement and now swims well – well for a 22 month old anyway, its not like he is going to set any world records yet. As a graduation test they threw him in the pool with his clothes on; he had to make it back to the edge of the pool unaided. No problem. This is a video of us a few weeks later at the Palolo Valley pool. Based on the number of views on You Tube maybe a bunch of you have watched this already, but here it is again…


What you don’t see in the video is how well he can float on his back. He does that thing where he flips over to catch a breath of air as he swims. Once he started to get tired he spends more and more time on his back catching his breath. This video shows a short rest, he can float on his back for minutes at a time (never tested how long he can sustain it). He uses these swimming skills to get away from us and avoid soap during his bath. When the soap comes out he get as much of his body under the water as he can to avoid the cleaning – which is odd because he likes being clean. When he lies on his back his ears are well under water – he likes this because of the way things sound, he will start singing and yelling just to hear how it sounds underwater.

The only problem with swimming at the city pools is that they don’t allow jumping in from the side, which is one of Rylan’s favorite things to do. We typically do it a few time and see how long we can get away with it before the life guard comes over and scolds us.

Had another first this weekend with Rylan. At least it seemed like a first – he played pretend. He handed me imaginary items at the dinner table. It started by him handing me his plastic animals one at a time, then when he ran out of those, he paused and then just pretended to pick up something with his fingers and hand it off to me. I would put the imaginary thing away and he would reach for another and give it to me. This went on for some time and he asked for them back after awhile. I would pretend to give them back and then he would get all excited. He has done a few other things like this since then that seems to indicate a new part of his brain becoming active. Always entertaining.

At the same dinner table, in a diner in Kihei, Maui the day after Thanksgiving, Rylan would only eat fries if I stuck them on the sword of his Indiana Jones-like plastic swashbuckler action figure. He calls the action figure Daddy. He would stick the loaded sword in his mouth and eat the fries like that. What ever it takes to get food into him. Maybe he will eat enough to grow hair some day.